Evil as Utter Irrationality

St. Augustine of Hippo as pictured during the Renaissance (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The shootings at Aurora, Colorado reveal the irrationality of evil acts. I do not know whether the shooter is mentally ill–that will be determined in a psychiatric evaluation–but in the U.S. legal system he is held responsible if he knew the difference between right and wrong when he committed his crimes. What strikes me about this tragedy is its utter senselessness. This reminds me of Augustine’s notion of evil–that turning away from God, one’s highest good, is a supremely irrational act. It is as irrational as Esau’s giving up his birthright for a bowl of soup. Killing one’s fellow human beings (apart from situations of self-defense) is ultimately irrational, even if a killer goes through a reasoning process in planning a murder or murders. Sometimes it is difficult to find the causal chain of reasoning that a person used to justify and plan a murder. I cannot understand what the motive of the Aurora shooter could be. Whitman at the Texas tower–I can understand his actions because a tumor was pressing on the emotional centers of his brain, causing the rage that led him to shoot multiple people from the tower at the University of Texas. In the Colorado case, there seems to be no reason at all for the man to shoot and kill twelve human beings and wound 59 others. Perhaps he was angry with dropping out of graduate school, but how many people in that theater had anything to do with his graduate school career? A few years ago a graduate student killed his adviser, and that, while an evil act, makes some sense. The current situation makes no sense, and reveals evil at its most irrational and dehumanizing. If the shooter did this for attention, he is like a child wanting attention who pushes his baby sister in the water–what the shooter did was childish in the most negative sense. The sheer spitefulness, selfishness, and pride of evil are clear–“I’m going to get the attention I crave by murdering people”). Other people are only “living tools” (Aristotle’s definition of a slave) to the spree killer. They are used to satisfy his own selfish goals. Conscience by this stage has been seared “as with a hot iron,” to use St. Paul’s terminology.

These factors mean that trying to make sense of the incident, at least in terms of the murderer’s motivation, is only helpful in a trial setting. Saying that he was a “loner” is irrelevant, since many people are loners who never commit crimes. My head spins when I think about this case and how stupid human evil ultimately is. What needs to be done is to pray for the victims killed and their families, pray that the wounded will fully recover, and pray that even in a fallen world, an event like this will not be repeated.

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It is my finding that there are two distinct types of murderous rampages that afflict this society. The first is the most expected. A man typically shoots up a restaurant and shoots himself. Later it comes out that he lost his job due to drinking; his wife and three kids had left; his pickup was being repossessed and he was deeply in debt. Upon careful medical examination it is determined that he had imbibed a great deal of alcohol at a bar and then swallowed a bottle of some psychotropic drug. We can make a kind of sense out of this intense rage at life.
The second type is far more sinister and fits the Aurora slayings. Holmes was a cool customer. Intelligent. Educated. And without a genuine motive. Even the Norwegian killer of last summer had a motive though he has much in common with Holmes. These killers have a psychopathic element. And I believe they both may have been subjected to some kinds of mind control. The timing of the Aurora massacre is wonderfully useful for getting votes for the UN treaty on guns.
Now there is a third type which we might easily overlook. That is the almost daily killings by drones. Often large numbers of innocent persons are killed and in some instances the target person is not one of them. From an ethical point of view all three types seem immoral–especially the last as we really do not have to use drones. But who will say that President Obama is an evil doer? Somehow his role and office and other not very clear things make these killings okay. [ A great deal is made out of massacres in Syria which were a daily event perpetrated often by the USA & its NATO allies in Iraq.]
It is now a very well documented fact that psychiatric medications can cause a genuinely normal persons to entertain suicidal ideation, attempt and successfully complete suicide; or kill someone. These drugs are more dangerous than the illegal drugs. And easy to come by. We know that Holmes had taken a large dose of Vicodin. We know that large amount of drugs are given to American soldiers. One doctor has called this pharmaceutical terrorism.
Our old patterns of thought are not up to this brave new world. Persons deprived of conscience by drugs devised by clever scientists have left us way behind in the dust. In the meantime governments do the unconscionable with little or no resistance by the citizenry. Computer games of which we have no knowledge have prepared the young to do things we never thought of even in our worst moods.
If Obama gets his way the whole country will be a gun free zone like the Aurora theater where even those with conceal carry permits were forbidden to bring their firearms.

In the 2006 National Book Award winner, ECHO MAKER, one of the principal characters suffers from a rare condition due to a car accident, When his closest relative, his sister, comes to visit him in the hospital he is convinced that she is a fake, a look alike that some sinister group has provided with all sorts of information. When the same sister talks to him on the phone he believes it is his sister. This is a perfect example of irrational behavior. Note though that it involves damage to the brain. Oliver Sachs’ writings contain many anomalous conditions similarly brought on by accidents as well as diseases. Dr. Peter Bregan, perhaps the leading expert in the world on psychiatric medication, maintains that many irrational behaviors can be expected from persons taking these drugs or even quitting them. So what about the irrational actions of James Holmes?
It is more than a little tempting to see this “killer” as the product of at the very least some dangerous ingestions. But it seems like something more would be needed. Perhaps the mind control we have heard so much about since the film “The Manchurian Candidate”.
While irrational is generally used in a pejorative sense, certainly intuitions and religious experiences would also have to be called irrational. In my estimate no other group of people come close to the English speaking people when it comes to suspicion of the non-rational. In a way the rational is the religion, especially in the form of science. The atheist claims he is rational; and the believer is irrational and therefore foolish and even probably dangerous. Women are also accused of being more irrational than men. A criticism. I believe Aristotle advised that the man be at least 16 years older than a woman in order to handle her irrationality and not be thrown off balance.
The irrational in the sense of below the rational does expose one to the instinctive and animal. But we do not call animals evil for lacking the use of reason–and we have of course the evil genius. Hannibal Lector is not stupid or a poor reasoner; on the contrary. I am not sure irrational is a good choice for the label evil. I still like “evil is the relic of a former good” –from a Parsi mystic.

Evil is parasitic on the good as Augustine recognized. Psychopathy, though, is a difficult thing to classify–does it reflect an evil will or does it reflect mental illness? In Truman Capote’s IN COLD BLOOD, one of the murderers was fine until he suffered a head injury as a teenager. In some cases there may be a strong biological component. Yet other cases of psychopathic killers–the case of Richard Speck, for instance–involve a person who grew up in a difficult home environment. This is not excuse–most people in those environments do not become psychopaths. Perhaps psychopathy is caused by a mixture of heredity, environment, and bad choices that corrupt character.

In my estimation Schpenhauer does the best job of dealing with “free will”. In short, he quotes the medieval maxim, doing comes from essence. The question is, where does our essence come from. Until a certain council (and

one which the Pope did not attend) we had reincarnation. We could say the person’s past lives. That helps a little. Ultimately we have to trace back to a beginning– and one over which we had no control. The desire for ultimate blame is going to be frustrated.
We can envision two board games. In one pieces are moved around and some reach the spot called salvation; and some don’t. In the other eventually all the players reach a square called Liberation or Enlightenment. There is a sense of fairness to the second game which seems to be missing from the former.
In defense of the former the players maintain the existence of free will. However, free will is extremely hard to define. A round about definition is best. Free will makes the first game just as fair as the second one! This definition never satisfied me–I think it is cheating. An action may be random. It may be determined by a causal chain going off into the distant past. We can talk about reasons instead of causes or we can speak of dispositions. Etc. Ultimately when A did x he felt that was the thing to do. We can go endlessly into why’s. After years of looking I have yet to find a truly sound definition of free will. I think the truth is that for most it is left undefined and simply allows for the persons to assign guilt, responsibility and blame comfortably.
After many lives people get wise. Their actions naturally are more harmonious. After only a few lives the actions are crude and tend to be destructive. This makes a lot of sense. And I do not need a magical free will.
The first board game makes life very, very serious and grim. The second there is a lighter and playful quality.